Satellite News

Orbital ATK, Inc. announced it has shipped the Cygnus spacecraft’s service module to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for the next International Space Station (ISS) cargo mission, scheduled to launch on 3 December.

LISA Pathfinder, the European Space Agency’s gravitational-wave detection technology demonstrator, has left Stevenage ready for launch. It was shipped from the UK to Kourou in French Guiana on board an Antonov aircraft and arrived on 8 October, in preparation for its launch scheduled in early December.

The last Air Force GPS IIF in a block of 12 satellites was delivered to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, from Boeing’s manufacturing facility in El Segundo, California on 8 October.

Aerojet Rocketdyne announced the critical design review (CDR) completion for the jettison motor and the crew module reaction control system (RCS) on the Orion spacecraft. These two major subsystems that Aerojet Rocketdyne is building for Lockheed Martin and NASA are critical for ensuring astronaut safety and mission success.

Rocket: Atlas V; Payload: NROL-55, 13 CubeSats; Date: 8 October 2015, 1249 UTC; Launch site: Vandenberg Air Force Base, USA. It was ULA’s 10th launch in 2015 and the 101st successful launch since the company was formed in December 2006.

According to a Roscosmos announcement, the launch of a Proton-M launch vehicle with a Turkish satellite Turksat-4B is scheduled for 16 October 2015. The launch will be performed from the Baikonur launch site.

The Arabsat-6B and GSAT-15 telecommunications satellites are now in French Guiana – setting the stage for Arianespace’s next heavy-lift mission, which is scheduled for an early November lift-off.

In anticipation of a second phase of flight testing, Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) Space Systems has announced significant updates to two Dream Chaser spacecraft currently in development. The spacecraft are the atmospheric engineering test article (ETA) and the advanced composite orbital vehicle, which when tested will undergo a suborbital and orbital flight regimen, respectively.